Selenium is an web app functional testing tool written by ThoughtWorks. Selenium uses JavaScript and Iframes to embed a test automation engine in your browser, allowing Selenium to execute in any JavaScript-enabled browser. InfoQ spoke to Jeff Xiong, one of the Selenium core developers to find out more about the recent 0.8 release of Selenium core. Also, in this latest InfoQ article on Selenium, the Selenium team show how to configure the tool for testing Ajax applications using the waitForXxxx Selenium commands;demonstrating how to test a simple Ajax effect - an asynchronous text update - with Selenium.Read Testing Ajax Apps with Selenium.
On the release of version 0.8, Jeff Xiong explained each of the new features:
Selenium is open source and maintained by ThoughtWorks. The tool was designed specifically for the acceptance testing requirements of Agile teams.
- A "multiWindow" option which places the application-under-test in a separate window, allowing testing of "frame-busting" apps. In the past Selenium didn't deal with the applications-under-test (AUT) which use frames very well, because it put the AUT in an embeded frame instead of stand-alone window. That was one of the largest problems preventing people from using Selenium. In 0.8, we provided an option to put the AUT in a stand-alone window, so that we can deal with all kinds of AUT actions that previously might have broken Selenium (e.g. change location of "window.parent" or "window.top"). This is the most important improvement in this new version.
- More reliable page-load detection for popup windows. There's a bug makes firefox cannot detect "children" windows' page-load status. That means with the combination of older version of Selenium and firefox, there may be some unpredicatable test failures. In this new version we provided a firefox plugin, which enhances firefox and makes the test more reliable.
- New cookie-management actions. The past versions cannot deal with cookies. Users had to set up cookie environment in AUT by themselves to test cookie-related functionalities like "login". 0.8 provided cookie-handling actions like "createCookie", "deleteCookie" and "storeCookie", so that users can setup and teardown cookie environment in test cases.
- Run-speed slider and "Pause" button which replace the old Run/Walk/Step radio-buttons. In past versions we provided only 2 different speed
options: fast "Run" and slow "Walk". In 0.8 we provided a slider to control the speed. Users can choose any speed between "very fast" and "very slow", allowing them to observe the tests in action.